The Effect Of Survival Processing On Memory For Different Kinds Of Contextual Information

In recent years,some researchers began to conduct a functional analysis on memory from an evolutionary perspective.Issues they explored are what specific problems memory system is designed to solve and what information in specific areas memory system is sensitive to.In the process of evolution,the primary adaptive problem that human faced is survival.Researchers speculate that our memory system may preferentially encode and store survival-relevant information in order to increase the chance of survival and reproduction.According to this hypothesis,Nairne et al.created a survival processing paradigm,and they found that encoding words in a survival context showed superior retention than processing words in non-survival condition,that is,survival processing memory advantage.The survival processing effect has been replicated with a variety of studies,which together consolidate the robustness of the survival advantage.It should be pointed out,however,that these studies were focused exclusively on the item information.It is worth to explore whether survival processing could improve the memory for contextual information.Contextual information refers to a variety of specific episodic details that were established when item information is appeared,such as contextual information,perceptual information,and cognitive operations.A few researchers have examined the effects of survival processing on memory using contextual information as the retention measure,and found no memory advantage in survival processing condition.The number of the studies in this field is very small,and all these studies used a source monitoring paradigm,in which there was only one type of context information being measured.Contextual information comprises multiple context attributes.It is possible that the mnemonic effects of survival processing on different kinds of contextual information are different.Another form of measuring memory for contextual information is remember/know procedure,which could reflect any specific episodic details that participants remembered.The mnemonic enhancement effects of survival processing on contextual information can be effectively detected in the R/K procedure.In addition,the survival processing scenarios are similar in several aspects to the self-referential conditions,and the cognitive mechanisms underlying these two encoding procedures could be similar.Given the comparable effects of survival processing and self-referential encoding on item memory,it will be necessary to compare their mnemonic effects on contextual information.Hence,this study conducted four experiments to examine the influence of survival processing and self-reference encoding on memory for contextual information using R/K procedure and source identification test.Experiment 1 employed R/K procedure as a measure way and �remember' response as a representation of memory for contextual information.The result shows that compared with self and moving condition,survival scenarios promoted the processing of specific episodic details,as indexed by a �Remember' response.In terms of adaptive memory,keeping appropriate specific details in mind appears to have important fitness consequences.According to elaboration mechanisms,survival scenario fosters elaborated encoding,suggesting that more ideas and thoughts related to words may readily come to mind in a survival context.These richer cognitive operations may act as powerful retrieval cues or content for specific episodic details,which in turn facilitate the number of �R' response in survival scenario.Experiment 2 used source identification test as a measure way and the processing condition in which item was encountered as an indicator of memory for contextual information.We found that survival processing produced better memory for processing condition in comparison with moving condition,while survival scenario and self-referential condition did not differ significantly.When participants evaluated item according to the processing condition,item information and processing condition would be encoded into memory together.The cognitive resources that focused on item information would be assigned to processing condition naturally.In addition,the richer cognitive operations and more elaborative memory trace that item information captured from survival processing would be extended to processing condition closely related to item information.Likewise,generating an autobiographical experience is thought to engage rich cognitive operations,which would extend to memory for processing condition.Experiment 3 employed source identification test as measure way and the time at which item was encountered as an indicator of memory for contextual information.It is shown that survival processing produced superior memory for temporal information compared with moving condition,while survival scenario and self-referential condition did not differ significantly.Temporal information is totally not relevant to the rating task that participants focused on.Hence,the cognitive resources involved in rating task that participants focused on are difficult to be captured by temporal information.Although the encoding of temporal information is restricted,temporal information can be processed automatically,that is,it requires little cognitive resources to be encoded into memory.The temporal information would be more sensitive to the rich and elaborated encoding stimulated by survival processing,thus survival scenario showed memory advantage for temporal information.Experiment 4 used source identification test as measure way and the spatial position at which item was emerged as an indicator of memory for contextual information.The result indicated that compared with moving condition and self-referential condition,survival processing produced no memory advantage of spatial position.Like temporal information,the processing of spatial position is restrained because it is unable to engage in the rating task of item information.Also,both temporal information and spatial position information demand little cognitive resources to be processed.However,spatial location information and item information show a competitive relationship in capturing cognitive resources at the main processing channel(visual),which further inhibits the processing of spatial location.Although survival processing could engage higher levels of elaborated encoding,it is unable to fulfill the baseline of cognitive resources that spatial location requires because of the double processing restriction.Therefore,Experiment 4 found no memory advantage for spatial location in survival processing condition.To summarize,the current research examined the effect of survival processing on memory for several kinds of contextual information.The result shows that survival processing has different impact on memory for different kinds of contextual information: it can improve memory for specific episodic details indexed by a �Remember' response,processing condition and temporal information but not the spatial location of items.